UCLA had aspirations to play for a Pac-12 championship this season. Instead, with one game left, the Bruins have little more to play for than their pride.

A win against Cal at 4 p.m. at Memorial Stadium could earn the Bruins an NCAA waiver for a bowl game, but UCLA’s season-long fall from grace is almost complete.

The Bruins have lost five of their past six, including last week’s rivalry loss. Coach Jim Mora said dropping a second straight game to USC was “a tough one to get over.” Without many wins to their credit this year, the Bruins called on their heart to pull them through a dismal season and need to do it just once more.

“One thing that I can say with absolute certainty about this football team, our football team, is they never give in,” Mora said. “They never blink, they never give up, they keep playing hard.”

WHEN THE BRUINS HAVE THE BALL

When Kennedy Polamalu reimagined UCLA’s scheme during the offseason, the offensive coordinator made it for Josh Rosen. So for all the preseason talk about UCLA’s new offense, the year will end with the Bruins back in their old scheme and Rosen on the sideline.

Polamalu said the team gradually reverted to a spread offense since quarterback Mike Fafaul took the helm. After Fafaul made his first career start, completing 24 of 40 passes for 258 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions against Washington State, the coaching staff chose to move more toward its old spread system from the Noel Mazzone days. Fafaul, who came to UCLA when Mazzone reached out to him with a walk-on spot, had worked within the spread system his entire career at UCLA.

“We went through that decision with our quarterback,” Polamalu said. “With the situation that you have, you see more of the tempo and the spread but we still have a lot of the same pass concepts.”

During the first seven games of the season, the Bruins ran a play every 24.8 seconds. Since then, UCLA has shaved nearly five seconds from that pace, snapping the ball once every 20 seconds in the past four games. The Bruins operated at a breakneck speed against Utah, averaging a play every 16.4 seconds.

WHEN THE BEARS HAVE THE BALL

UCLA’s secondary is the most experienced part of a veteran-laden defense. UCLA’s senior defensive backs Randall Goforth, Fabian Moreau, Marcus Rios and Tahaan Goodman have 109 combined starts and will likely play their final games in a Bruins uniform Saturday. It’ll also be one of their toughest matchups this year.

Cal is third in the country in passing (364.1 yards per game), led by quarterback Davis Webb and receiver Chad Hansen. Hansen, who started his college career at Idaho State, leads the Pac-12 in both receiving yards per game (121.4) and receptions per game (9.1).

The Bruins say they’re up for the challenge. They’re one of the best pass defenses in the country, ranking eighth in FBS and second in the Pac-12. They successfully held Washington State’s vaunted aerial attack without a passing touchdown and have relinquished just 10 touchdowns through the air this year, the fewest in the Pac-12.

“We’ve played some really good receivers in the Pac-12 obviously, but for how much Cal throws the ball and what they’re trying to do with the tempo and all that kind of stuff, it adds another dimension for those guys,” defensive backs coach Demetrice Martin said.

To see so many of his players go from fresh-faced pups to graduating seniors is both exciting and emotional, Martin said. He’ll try to hide as many feelings as he can while he sees his seniors off.

“I think they’ll go out with a bang,” Martin said. “I think they have the right focus right now and the right mentality for how the season has gone, that keep-working-hard, lunch-pail mentality and it’s what I love about these guys.”

Thuc Nhi Nguyen has covered UCLA for the Southern California News Group since 2016. A proud Seattle native, she majored in journalism and mathematics at the University of Washington. She likes graphs, animated GIFs and superheroes.

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